Landscape+Urbanism

Category: films

  • Global Weirding in the PNW

    One of the group of amazing climate scientist-communicators Katherine Hayhoe, who is both a prolific presenter on all topics climate, along with being a force on Twitter (@KHayhoe) explaining and defending climate change science. Her ongoing YouTube series ‘Global Weirding‘ allows an accessible and fun (yet deeply informative) look at the topic from many angles…

  • Shrinking Cities: Detroit’s Agony (1990)

    A clip that spawned a lot of conversation within our reading group, from 1990, Diane Sawyer reporting on ABCs Primetime Live, in a series called ‘Detroit’s Agony’ – which looks at Mayor Coleman Young’s legacy, and plays on Detroit as ‘the first urban domino to fall…’ [More after the video] The shock of ‘Devils Night’,…

  • To New Horizons

    Oh the sick and twisted future… a film from General Motors in 1940 entitled ‘To New Horizons’ talking about the world twenty years later.  Yes indeed, “Man continually strives to replace the old, with the new!”  Spotted on one of my favorite new sites – Copenhagenize.  Check it out.

  • Pruitt Igoe Now

    Another good ideas competition, Pruitt Igoe Now the infamous St. Louis housing complex that was demolished in 1972 and considered one of the touchstones in the ‘death’ of modernism.  The site is typical of the towers in the park ideal most notably ascribed to public housing and derived from version of Le Corbusier’s Radiant City…

  • RBC: Urban Earth: Mumbai

    Urban Earth: Mumbai  |  Raven-Elison & Askins Urban Earth, with studies in Mumbai, Mexico City, and London:  Their approach: “walking across some of Earth’s biggest urban areas, to explore their spatial realities for the people who live there and challenge dominant media discourses regarding the places in which most of us now live.  The idea…

  • Tales from Portlandia

    As it is always important to laugh at oneself  – the 6-part IFC Original short-based comedy series PORTLANDIA, created, written by and starring Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein will premiere January 21, 2011 at 10:30 PM ET/PT. Each episode’s character-based shorts draw viewers into “Portlandia,” the creators’ dreamy and absurd rendering of Portland, Oregon. Bloody brilliant… Can’t wait for…

  • The Suburban Prelude: The City (1939)

    An interesting film, created as part of the 1939 New York World’s Fair, is ‘The City‘, an heavily anti-urban vision of the perils of the the modern city agglomeration.  Using a number of images from both the smoky and polluted industrial Pittsburgh and the crowded, frenetic cosmopolitan New York City of the 1930s, the film…

  • The Wilderness Downtown

    I have in the past alluded to the ‘Soundtrack of Spaces‘ linking music to our physical environment.  I know most people have amused themselves with this video experiment, but I finally found myself engaging with the Arcade Fire’s interactive video ‘The Wilderness Downtown‘ – perhaps a literal interpretation of the space/music connection.  The narrative film,…

  • Calthorpe on Portland…

    “…a global model of Transit-Oriented Development.”

  • Alan Berger on Landscape Waste

    Via World Landscape Architect a two-part video of Alan Berger: “CUSP Conference organisers recently posted a two part video of Alan Berger’s presentation at the 2009 CUSP Conference on Landscape Waste. An interesting look at landscapes waste resulting from industrial processes.” Check out part 2 here.